I watched the Iron Bowl on Saturday and after basking in the
glorious HOLYSHIT-ness of it all, I wondered what would happen if you returned
a field goal in the middle of a game but failed to bring it all the way to the
house. Do you get the ball at the spot
you returned it? Or does the ball
automatically go back to the spot of the kick?

Turns out that the return counts no matter how far you
advance it. So if your dude fields the
ball in the end zone, then runs it out to the five and trips over his own shoe,
you get the ball at the five. OH
SHIT! So keep that in mind. It makes perfect sense to attempt a field
goal return at the end of a half. But in
the middle of a game, you could potentially lose a shitload of yards bringing
out a ball that's been kicked from mid-field.
Especially if your team is the Bills.
That would happen to the Bills.

Your letters:

Adam:

Who has the perfect amount of advantages from their fame
with the least amount of drawbacks? I wouldn't want to be Kobe Bryant
famous, where you can't even go out to eat without people constantly
approaching you for photos and autographs. But being NOT famous also
sucks. Is there anyone who has achieved the perfect balance?

Entertainment Weekly
did an interview with Louis CK a while back in which CK said that he had
achieved the exact right amount of fame and didn't want any more of it, but I think
that's wishful thinking on his part.
He's way too famous now, and he's so beloved that I'm sure people walk
up to him all the time and treat him like an old friend, like "OMG the
kids at my kid's school are assholes too!" and then poor Louie has to be
like, "Who the fuck are you?"
The best kind of fame is fame that happens at your behest, where you can
be as recognizable or as unrecognizable as you please. You can go to the store and not be harassed,
but then you can schedule a concert and have 10,000 screaming fans packed into
an arena waiting for you. And you're rich. You gotta be rich.

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The goal is to be well known, to be revered
as someone who's competent in his or her profession but boring enough not to attract paparazzi
or any of that shit. Like the lady who
wrote The Hunger Games. I bet Suzanne Collins (Did you know she lives
in Newtown, Conn.? That's awkward) can put
her hair in a ponytail, go to the market, and be left alone. But then she can fly to LA, head to a
bookstore, and get a fucking line that wraps around 18 city blocks. Any situation where you can plan the
environment where people recognize you is pretty solid. Lots of writers can do that, and no paparazzi
will ever bother them because writers are ugly.
You can also probably avoid 95 percent of Famous People Problems simply by not
living in New York or Los Angeles.

Also, the guys from Daft Punk have it down. They can take off their helmets and be two
random French assholes any time they like.
But man, I bet the inside of those helmets smell like a hockey locker
room. You're basically wearing a mascot
uniform anywhere you play. I couldn't
handle that.

Ben:

Just went to put on a pair of shoes and saw a dead mouse
sitting in the left one — I definitely made the right decision by tossing that
pair of shoes directly into the trash, right?

Probably. It also
gives you an excuse to buy new shoes. And
even though many men won't admit it, New Shoe Day is pretty thrilling. I buy new sneakers once a year, if that, and
that first day in the new kicks is awesome.
IT'S LIKE I'M WALKING ON THE MOON!
You spend that day laboring under the delusion that everyone has quietly
noticed and admired your new footwear. Yes, that's right. They're New Balances. Only cost me $60 at the DSW. SAVVY.

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I'm willing to wager that there are plenty of guys out there
who would dump the mouse in the trash and continue wearing their shoes,
because it's cheap and easy. Between
doing something and doing nothing, I will almost always choose the latter. I tend to overlook grossly unsanitary
incidents simply out of sheer laziness.
For example, if I go to a restaurant, and I get a sandwich, and it's
really good, and there's a hair in it? I
just pull it out and keep eating it.
Otherwise, I gotta send it back and wait for a whole new sandwich and
put up a fuss and it just doesn't seem worth it when it's just a stupid hair. Even a pussy hair. If it were a dismembered finger? Whole new ballgame.

Eric:

Is it paranoid to believe that someone made a social media
status update about how tired/sick/busy they are just because they had plans
with you in an hour or two and are looking to plant evidence in support of
their pending bullshit excuse?

I don't think that's paranoid to believe. No one wants to look like a flake—even
though everyone wants to flake out on everything—and so planting an alibi on
Facebook is the perfect crime. Who will
dispute your brown lung once you've made it public? If it's on the Internet, it must be true!

I know the Internet is a cold and mean place, but typically
people are almost TOO nice whenever you post about a minor bout of flu or
something like that. Whenever I tell
bosses or whomever that I have to take my kid to the doctor, I always make sure
to let them know it's not serious, so that they don't have to emotionally
overreact for no good reason. Because if
you don't let people know that, they'll email back OMG IS SHE ALL RIGHT IT'S
NOT CANCER IS IT I WILL PRAY FOR YOU. Sometimes,
people really want you to know they care, which is nice!

Jon:

How cool would it be if, after a kicker nails a field goal,
the broadcast would tell us how long that kick would have been good from? They
could even wait until after the commercial break to heighten the suspense.

I think networks could do that. They would just need some NERDY ENGINEERING
NERD to come up with a way of tracking a kick and computing its total distance
traveled. They already replay passes
with the ball tracing a digital trail on the screen. No reason they can't do the same for
kicks.

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The problem is that this kind of technology will set up
unreasonable expectations for your kicker.
I've said it before, but one of the most annoying announcer tics is when
they're like, "We saw Matt Prater in the pregame warmups and he was
nailing them from 90 yards out!"
They always get you hot and bothered for a record-setting field goal
attempt that is rarely attempted and even more rarely made. So if you see the FOXTRAIL on the screen
telling you Robbie Gould's kick would have been good from 80 yards, you'll
want an 80-yard field-goal attempt.
And then the other team will return it for a touchdown.

Andrew:

Suppose Le'Veon Bell had actually been killed when his
helmet popped off. Would the officials still have nullified the touchdown when
they saw the ball hadn't crossed the plane before his helmet came off? Wouldn't
that have been beyond the pale and entirely beside the point, or are the rules
of the game immutable no matter what?

They would have still nullified the touchdown. This is a man's game! You don't get rewarded a touchdown simply for
DYING. Just like some GLORY CORPSE to go
asking for a handout! Remember: Even if
a player clearly died on the field, the NFL would never announce it right
away. They would cart him off, have
paramedics attempt to revive him, and then declare him dead well after the call
had been reversed. They wouldn't be
like, "Oh hey, no pulse. Give that
poor guy a touchdown. That'll make
everything OK!" The show goes
on. It's what Le'Veon would have wanted.

DC:

I recently got into a debate with a female co-worker that I
would like your help settling. At a recent post-work happy hour with a bunch of
our co-workers, she talked about a statistic she found on a blog that 2 out of
every 3 adult men in this country have paid for sex at some point in their
lives. She is completely convinced that this is true. Every other person we
were with told her she was insane. I tried to make an argument based on sheer
numbers, but she is unwilling to concede. I am a 25-year-old guy; I figure that
would put me (and thus my peers) in the prime paying-for-sex age range. Of all
of the people I know, and can only think of one person who has done this. Am I
(along with most everyone I work with) living in total denial, or is this girl
totally off-base?

She's off base. A
recent study showed that roughly nine percent of men had
admitted to paying for sex. Another
study puts the high
estimate at 20 percent. Obviously, not
every man is going to admit that he bought a hooker. In fact, those nine percent who did admit it are
fucking idiots. You could probably push
that estimate up to 30 percent or 40 percent to take all liars and public officials into
account. But for every hard-up teenager
or dirty old man who feels the need to pay for sex, there's another man who is
too proud to do it, or is too terrified of hiring a hooker who turns out to be
an undercover cop wearing a secret thong camera. Or what if the hooker's bodyguard clubs you
and steals all your shit? Or what if the
hooker turns out to be your sister-in-law?
The potential for personal humiliation is huge ... sometimes large enough
to overrule any emergency boner, especially with free internet porn just a
click away now.

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The fear of getting caught paying for sex is probably worse
than the fear of getting caught masturbating.
At least when you're caught masturbating, you're getting caught doing
something everyone does. And you're
alone. People will sympathize. But if you're a governor caught running a
train at the Bunny Ranch? Not so much.

Adam:

What do you do when you get poop on your phone?

Apple instructs you to turn your phone off and wipe down the
screen with a dry, lint-free cloth. They
do not recommend using household cleaners like Windex, but they're only
thinking about benign filth-like dirt or Cheeto dust. This is fecal matter we're dealing with,
which means a dry cloth is nowhere near enough.
I suggest you find a bottle of glasses cleaner, spray it onto some
tissues, and wipe the poop off that way.

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That's if that shit gets on the screen only. If liquid diarrhea seeps into the button
area, you're supposed to bring your phone to a local retailer to see if it can
be salvaged. If you bought your phone
from Verizon, I have no ethical problem with your handing your poop phone to a salesman there and neglecting to tell him that it's a poop phone. Those people are animals.

Adam:

Say someone was born in 1933 with the superpower to shield
the Earth with a force field to protect us from asteroids, etc. This
person goes throughout their life without really having to use their power and
then dies of natural causes in 2013 at the age of 80. Does not having this
"superhero" around bring world leaders together to invest trillions
trying to develop technology to replace what this person could do? Does
everyone on the planet go crazy raping and pillaging everything/everyone else
because we're now vulnerable to getting hitting by space rocks? Or does
everyone just shrug their shoulders and say fuck it that guy didn't do shit
anyway?

The latter. If you
never actually saw the guy save the planet, then you won't appreciate his power
enough to compensate for it. You have to
see it. You have to know what you're
missing. If that guy openly deflected three
world-killing asteroids in his lifetime and THEN he died, you bet your ass that
we would spend $50 trillion on a NASA laser that could do the same thing, only all
that money would be funneled into contractor slush funds and poorly disguised
hooker expense reports. Fucking red
tape.

HALFTIME!

Brandon:

If LeBron James told Dan Gilbert he would come back and play
for the Cavs if and only if Gilbert also allowed him to quarterback the
Cleveland Browns, could Gilbert make this happen?

No. If he demanded to
play wideout, that would be one thing, because LeBron was a wideout in high
school and because any NFL team would happily take a flyer on him at that
position. But I don't think the Browns
would agree to the idea if meant starting LeBron at QB for 16 games. The only possible way Gilbert could make that
happen is if he informed the public of the ultimatum (via Comic Sans font,
natch) and built up public pressure on the Browns to give it a shot. And even then, I don't think it would
work. I think that people would resent
the demand and hate LeBron all over again, which would be fun! It's been a while since we all hated his guts. Always nice to bring the feeling
back.

Dustin:

How dominant would an NFL kicker be in a coed kickball
league? Would he ever make an out?

Of course he would.
It's kickball. You're kicking a
glorified beach ball. It can go only so
far before air drag slows it down and makes it relatively easy to catch. Kickers train year round and fine-tune their
bodies to kick a very particular kind of ball in a very particular kind of
way. The mechanics of kickball are
completely different. So tough shit for
you, David Akers!

Chris:

If you had a cop car, uniform, gun and gear with total legal
immunity for one night, what would you do? Here is what my night would entail:
excessive speeding with lights on while driving everywhere, attend an NFL game
and proceed directly to the sidelines (cops can just walk onto the field,
right?); find a way to save a hot woman in distress by shooting some huge
abusive bastard in a tank top; find someone who attempts to flee from me so
that I can pursue them and then hit them with the police car; tase at least 3
people (hopefully a few smart ass college kids); and finally hit up as many
Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks and pizza places as I could (cops always get free
shit).

Do cops always get free shit? If I worked a Dunkin Donuts and a cop
demanded three dozen donuts for free, I'd take a shit inside one of the
boxes. I bet certain places charge cops
DOUBLE.

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The first thing I would do with my copper outfit is walk the
beat in some charming urban neighborhood.
I'd sit on the stoop with Da Mayor.
I'd playfully jump into stickball games with the local kids. I'd hit the local diner and tell the lady
behind the counter that she makes the best damn cup of coffee in America
today. By the end of the day, I'd be
Officer Drew: the neighborhood's favorite cop!
Officer Drew is on your side!

Then night would fall and I would do this:

How could you, Officer
Drew?!

Also, I would go to the evidence room and take everything
cool: wads of cash, bricks of weed, keistered heroin ... all of it. NO ONE WILL SUSPECT A THING.

Richard:

Would you want to see a replay of a time you almost die in
life and had absolutely no idea? Like you almost stepped on the most
poisonous snake ever on a hike and you had no idea it was an inch
from your foot or some lunitic on a bus standing next to you about to
shoot everyone on it has a change of heart and your life is spared?

No. Ask anyone who's
ever been in a near fatal car wreck or had some other brush with death that he was fully aware of. It haunts
you. You can't help but envision that
alternate reality where you actually die and you have no future. I was in a car with a friend once and we
nearly got T-boned by an old lady and run into a ravine that dropped down at
least 30 feet. And my reaction wasn't
that I was glad to be alive... it was a kind of deep terror that I had managed
to find myself that close to death to begin with. You feel like you fucked up somehow. You get close enough to the disaster that the
image of it becomes so vivid in your mind that you can't shake it and you wish
the whole thing had never happened. It's
survivor's guilt, even if no one else perished at your expense.

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A few months ago, my son was walking atop a wall near our
house. I kept asking him to come down,
but kids are stubborn, so there you have it.
He was dicking around up there and lost his footing and I caught him
before he could fall to the concrete driveway below. Who the fuck knows if it would have killed him or
given him permanent brain damage or what have you, but sometimes I think about
it and am haunted by all the possibilities.
I'm not happy he's still alive.
I'm angry at myself for not getting him off that wall sooner, for
putting him in that position. It makes
you conscious of just how close death is, and that is not comfortable. Because there are more walls, man. There are always more walls. DAMN YOU WALLS!

Dan:

If a song comes on in the car from a singer with say, a
British accent, do you sing the words with said accent?

I feel obligated to sing it the way the guy on the radio is singing
it. I wouldn't overdo the accent, but
the hint of it would be there. I'm not
arrogant enough to sing my own arrangement of it. If I ever sat next to someone in a car who
harmonized with a song, I'd murder them.

Elliott:

During a commercial break I ran to the bedroom to grab
something and noticed I had left my TV on tuned to the NFL Network. Did you
know that during the Sunday afternoon games, they just have a silent, live
updating scoreboard? Who in the world is watching this?

It works if you're some asshole with a BRO-CAVE with lots of
TVs who wants one TV used as a live scoreboard.
Also, I don't think the broadcast is silent. One time I was at the gym on a Sunday and the
TV on the machine was fucked up (FACT: 85 percent of all exercise machine TVs don't
work) and only that channel came in, and I think they bounced around between
local radio broadcasts. Anyway, the league doesn't want you watching NFL Network when games are on anyway. They may as well put on a Showtime Rotisserie
Grill infomercial just to keep you away.

Email of the week!

Todd:

In an old Jamboroo, you asked what the longest anyone has
ever gone without changing the oil. The answer to that question is my
wife.

Several years ago, I bought her a brand new minivan.
At the time, we had three kids, all under the age of 5. God, she was so
proud of that minivan. I told her that I was going to take it to an LSU
game because it had more room than my truck (500 mile round trip), and her
response was: "No way that you and your idiot friends are getting
anywhere near my new car."

Anyway, we had had the van for just under three years, and one
day it starts smoking. The van had about 26,000 miles on it. I
thought "Well, this isn't good, but at least it's still under
warranty." So, I fire her up and take her to the dealership, ready
to get my FREE warranty work done. After about 30 minutes, the woman who
is running the service department comes out and asks me: "When was
the last time you had the oil changed in that van?" I have no idea
— it's my wife's fucking car — so I call my wife and ask her. Her
answer: "Never."

I couldn't believe it. She had had the van for three
fucking years! I immediately begin the Inquisition on her: WHY THE
FUCK WOULD YOU GO THREE YEARS WITHOUT CHANGING THE FUCKING OIL?!?!?!?!?!
Her response: "I thought a light would come on when it needed
changing." And because she had never had it changed, she didn't have
a windshield sticker to tell her when to do it.

Worst of all: THIS FIASCO BECAME MY FAULT
SOMEHOW. She immediately jumps my ass, telling me that it is THE MAN'S
RESPONSIBILITY to get the oil changed. I respond by telling her that all
she had to do was tell me she needed it changed and I would have done it.
For God's sake, I can barely keep up with my shit and I'm responsible for
keeping up with her oil changes? Anyway, she refused to take any
responsibility and this became yet other example of how FOOTBALL IS MORE
IMPORTANT THAN YOUR FAMILY.

At the end of the day, it was NOT covered by the warranty
(of course) and it cost me $6,000.00 to put a new engine into a car that only
had 26,000 miles and was nowhere close to paid for. Shit, I could have
bought her a new Bentley for less money.

Probably the worst part of this story is that the visit to
the dealership took place on the morning of my fantasy football draft and it
occurred at a time in my life when I didn't have any money. So, I had
scraped together cash to pay for my fantasy entry fee and I could even enjoy
the draft because all I could think about was where I was going to wrangle up
$6,000.00. And, now, every year on my fantasy draft day, I remember this
unpleasantness.

Another reader said his old lady ran their car to 70,000
miles without changing it, but I'm a little skeptical of that. But this guy with the van? That's REAL anger.